<<

and the Lust of the Eyes

Thirteen Artists in His Work

ADELINE R. TINTNER For Meyer Schapiro and In memory of my parents and my sister

Copyright © 1993 by Louisiana State University Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America

02 01 00 99 98 97 96 95 94 93 5432I Designer: Glynnis Phoebe Typeface: Granjon Typesetter: Graphic Composition, Inc. Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tintner, Adeline R., 1912- Henry James and the lust of the eyes : thirteen artists in his work / Adeline R. Tintner. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-8071-1752-8 1. James, Henry, 1843-1916—Knowledge—Art. 2. Art and literature. I. Title. PS2127.A75T557 1992 813'.4—dc2o 92-15495 CIP Contents

Preface xi

Abbreviations xv

Introduction I i "The Siege of London" and Couture's Romans of the Decadence 7

2 Goujon and Pilon: French Renaissance Sculpture in 22

} "A London Life" and Hogarth's Marriage a la Mode 36

4 Miriam Rooth as the English Rachel: Gerome's Rachel as the Tragic Muse 56

5 "The Chaperon" and "Gianbellini's" Madonna and Child 70

6 Lord Leighton and His Paintings in "The Private Life" 78

7 Holbein's : A Pictorial Source for The Ambassadors 87

8 Bronzino s Lucrezia Panciatichi in via 95

9 A Pinturicchio Figure in the Revised 105

10 Daumier's Saltimbanques in the Revised Roderick Hudson 125

11 Rococo and Longhi 133

12 James Discovers Jan Vermeer of Delft 151

Index 255 7 Holbein's The Ambassadors: A Pictorial Source for The Ambassadors

The life of the occupant struck him, of a sudden, as more charged with posses­ sion even than Chad's or than Miss Barrace's; wide as his glimpse had lately become of the empire of "things," what was before him still enlarged it; the lust of the eyes and the pride of life had indeed thus their temple.

—Strether's comment on Miss Gostrey's apartment in The Ambassadors

NE of the puzzles in Jamesian scholarship is the question of why the novel The Ambassadors remained untitled until James Osent the finished manuscript to his agent, James Pinker, on July 10, 1901. James referred to all of his later novels (beginning with The Spoils of Poynton [1897] an(^ including The Wings of the Dove and ) by title long before they were submitted for publica­ tion, as many of his letters testify. But the first time he gave any intima­ tion that The Ambassadors was to be the title of this novel was when he sent the finished work to Pinker: "I enclose to you at last, by this post, the too-long retarded Finis of'The Ambassadors'" (HJL, IV, 194). His proposal, sent ten months earlier to his publisher, 's, and dated September 1, 1900, reads simply, "Project of Novel by Henry James" (CN, 541). My conjecture is that something occurred between the date of his proposal and the date of his letter to Pinker that inspired his choice of title. In fact, something did happen in London in 1900 to interest all concerned with art, and with Holbein specifically. The double portrait by Holbein in the National Gallery (Fig. 40), once thought to represent the court poet Sir Thomas Wyatt and his friend the antiquarian John Leland, was established by Mary F. S. Hervey to be a portrait of the French ambassadors to the court of Henry VIII: Jean de Dinteville, lord of Polisy, and Georges de Selve, bishop of Lavour. These two young men, both under thirty years of age, along with their talismanic objects 88 HENRY JAMES AND THE LUST OF THE EYES Holbein's The Ambassadors Mij represented on canvas all that was the best in French civilization of the spring of 1900.3 James based "The Beldonald Holbein" on 1 lolbein's early sixteenth century. Hervey's discovery was the result of careful portrait of Lady Butts (Fig. 41), which his friend Isabella Stewart (Gard­ iconographic analysis and a study of archival material. She published ner had just acquired for her Fenway Court house and museum/ Even her finding, which has never been seriously contested, in her book Hol­ as a young art critic, James considered Holbein to be among the great bein's Ambassadors: The Picture and the Men, explaining that the old masters of the portrait. In his essay on Eugene Fromentin's Les Maitres French tradition of identifying the men in the painting as ambassadors d'Autrefois (1876), James pointed out that the French critic had placed had been supplanted erroneously by the English practice of naming Holbein far ahead of Peter Paul Rubens as a portraitist (PE, 119). Per­ Wyatt and Leland as the subjects of the portrait. With Hervey's revela­ haps it was this particular judgment by Fromentin that prompted tion, Holbein's painting became known as Jean de Dinteville and Georges James to have Chad Newsome give Les Maitres d'Autrefois as a gift to de Selve ("The Ambassadors")} Mamie Pocock in the last quarter of The Ambassadors {AM, 263). Later, The painting itself had been on view at the National Gallery since in 1909, James wrote a play to mark the occasion of England's retention 1890, when the earl of Radnor had sold it to the government, which of Holbein's Christina of Denmar\, Duchess of Milan (Fig. 42). The was assisted in the purchase by the private subscription of three wealthy painting was almost lost to an American billionaire (undoubtedly J. P. donors. But ten years later the painting acquired a new designation Morgan) but was purchased by means of a public subscription and a as the portrait of official representatives of French Renaissance civiliza­ large anonymous donation, about which James wrote with interest to tion. This development would have drawn James to the museum and Gosse. The play became the novel , in which James deplores 5 probably to Hervey's book. It is unlikely that James owned the book, the lax custody of art wealth in the hands of the English aristocracy. since there is no copy in his library. However, from Janu­ Having had such a longstanding appreciation of Holbein's genius, ary to April, 1901, James lived in London at both the Reform and the James, predictably, would have been interested in the renaming of the Athenaeum clubs, and the library of the latter, which James frequently superb painting that was the first Holbein acquired by the National 2 Gallery. made good use of, probably had the book. Even if James had not known all the details of Hervey's book, The Ambassadors would have As we have seen with The Tragic Muse, it was not a novelty for come to his attention because his close friends Sir Sidney Colvin and James to name a work after a painting of great distinction. By titling Sir were associated with the National Gallery boards the novel after The Ambassadors by Holbein, who was at this point es­ and were also undoubtedly influential in procuring the funds to pur- - pecially high in his estimation as a maker of fine portraits, James would chase the painting. They would have related to James all the current remind his readership of the newly diagnosed masterpiece. But the co­ gossip surrounding Hervey's finding and the large numbers of people incidence of the portrait's dramatic identification aside, do we have evi­ that turned out to see the painting as a result. dence that the painting's title would be appropriate for James's novel? We know that James's attention was upon Holbein a few months Can we make a case for a clear relationship between Holbein's The before he began The Ambassadors. He wrote the "The Bel­ Ambassadors and the content of James's The Ambassadors? Indeed we donald Holbein" (1901) in the fall of 1899 and started his novel in the 3. , The Treacherous Years, I&%-I<)OI (Philadelphia, 1969), 328, 356, 1. Mary F. S. Hervey, Holbein's Ambassadors: The Picture and the Men (Lon­ Vol. IV of Edel, Henry James, 5 vols. don, 1900); National Gallery, Illustrated General Catalogue (London, 1973), no. 4. See Adeline R. Tintner, "The Real-Life Holbein in James's Fiction," A. K. 1314. Bookman's Weekly, January 8, 1979, pp. 278-87. 2. Denys Wyatt, the then secretary of the Athenaeum Club, in a letter to me 5. Henry James to Sir Edmund Gosse, June 4, 1909, in Selected Letters oj dated November 16, 1982, wrote, "I suspect that it is more than likely that Mary Henry James to Edmund Gosse, 1882-1915: A Literary Friendship, ed. Rayburn S. Hervey's book was on our shelves because, as you know, our Library is pretty Moore (Baton Rouge, 1988), 240; Adeline R. Tintner, "Henry James's The Outcry comprehensive." and the Art Drain of 1908-1909," Apollo (February, 1981), 110-12. 90 HENRY JAMES AND THE LUST OF THE EYES Holbein's The Ambassadors 91

can, and in doing so, we expand the field of their interrelation. The the novel, that they are, respectively, the outgoing and incoming ambas­ Ambassadors is James's novel praising Parisian civilization. He invokes sadors. However, once we learn that Dinteville, according to his dagger the Balzacian "liaison" of the young man (Chad Newsome) with the sheath in Holbein's painting, is twenty-nine years old (Fig. 43) and that older aristocratic woman (Marie de Vionnet), and he takes Lambert Selve, according to the inscription on his Bible, is twenty-five, we may Strether on a trip through Notre Dame, the Louvre, and the country­ also view as ambassadors the two young men of the novel, Chad and side around Paris—all to demonstrate the civilizing aspects of modern his painter friend Little Bilham, twenty-eight years old and a few years France. Holbein's Ambassadors is likewise a tribute to French civiliza­ younger respectively. Their situation mirrors that of Dinteville and tion, although of the Renaissance period. Selve; they are the ambassadors in residence.8 At the end of the novel, Holbein painted The Ambassadors in 1533 under Dinteville's per­ Chad and Bilham are about to return to America after representing sonal guidance during the Frenchman's first mission to England. Fran­ their country in Paris. Chad will bring with him the education sentimen- cis I had sent Dinteville to England to ensure stability in relations with tale that France bestows on young men, and Bilham the ability to judge that country during Henry VIH's divorce from Catherine and subse­ painting. No longer do we have the trivium and the quadrivium, but quent marriage to Anne Boleyn. The painting celebrates the seven lib­ less traditional goals and objectives—above all, the goal of learning eral arts: grammar, rhetoric, and logic (the trivium); and arithmetic, how to live a sensual life, to live all one can. There are other ambassa­ music, geometry, and astronomy (the quadrivium). On the top of the dors as well in the novel, but they are subordinate to the two principal table between the two men, there are objects of scientific interest: pairs, who in the course of the narrative exchange characteristics. a celestial globe, a cylindrical sundial, two types of quadrants, a poly­ Strether, for example, becomes younger-thinking and culpable as Chad hedral sundial, and a torquetum, which determines the position of becomes more mature and more responsible. celestial bodies. On the shelf of the table there are objects representing The chief evidence of an intended parallel between Holbein's paint­ the arts: a lute, a case of flutes, a hymnbook opened to Martin Luther's ing and James's novel is that both embody the themes of memento mori version of Veni Creator Spiritus and to his Ten Commandments, and a and carpe diem. We can see how these themes are carried in the painting terrestrial globe on which the name of Polisy, Dinteville's home, is by looking at its iconography—both what is obvious to the layman's eye 6 found. On the left is Dinteville, in Brantome's terms the homme d'epee, and what has been revealed by Hervey's analysis. Hervey tells us that de robe courte, and on the right is the bishop of Lavour, the homme de Dinteville selected the symbolic objects that would surround him in the plume, de robe longue. One of Hervey's chief sources on French Renais­ portrait; they are all reminders of death—the distorted skull in the sance society was the fifteen-volume Oeuvres de Brantome. James's set of foreground (Figs. 44, 45), the barely discernible skull pendant in his cap Brantome is inscribed "Henry James, Lamb House," indicating that (Fig. 46), and the small crucifix in the upper left-hand corner of the 7 James acquired it after 1898. Did Holbein's painting and Hervey's book picture (not visible in Fig. 40). Dinteville apparently had seen Holbein's stimulate the purchase? "Dance of Death" series of engravings and "had adopted the skull or In James's novel, we have usually considered the ambassadors to be Death's-head as his personal ... badge (or devise)." He called himself Strether, the litterateur, sent to France to fetch for Mrs. Newsome her 8. According to the OED, ambassador has two meanings: an official sent on a son Chad, and viewable as the homme de robe longue, and his successor, mission to represent his country; and one who acts as a permanent representative Jim Pocock, the businessman, the homme de robe courte, the swordsman in residence for his country. Strether and Pocock are ambassadors in the first sense as opposed to Strether the penman. We are told, even if rather late in of the word; Chad and Bilham are resident ambassadors. In fact, almost every character in the novel except Madame de Vionnet fulfills the OED definition of an 6. National Gallery Catalogue, 321. ambassador by serving fellow countrymen in a foreign land. Maria Gostrey s "mis­ 7. See Leon Edel and Adeline R. Tintner, The Library of Henry James (Ann sion" is the first one to be mentioned in the novel; Miss Barrace (rhyming with Arbor, 1987), 158-91. Paris) also aids her countrymen in an ambassadorial role. »

92 HENRY JAMES AND THE LUST OF THE EYES Holbein's The Ambassadors 93

"the most melancholy ambassador that ever was seen."9 As in the paint­ that he might, for all the world, have been going to die—die re­ ing, death is hidden in James's novel. Death stalks behind the idea of signedly; the scene was filled for him with so deep a death-bed hush, so carpe diem. "Live all you can now, for it will be too late if you don't." melancholy a charm." He views "the reckoning" as if it "were to be one That motif is found in the first pages of James's proposal for the novel and the same thing with extinction" (AM, 409). (CN, 542), in his Notebooks (CN, 225), and in several of his letters (HJL, Holbein's painting conceals its reminders of death in a typical IV, 199). It is The Ambassadors' main theme, expressed in Strether's ad­ sixteenth-century blend of device (the skull) and motto (memento mori). vice to Bilham at the ambassadorial garden party given by the sculptor James's novel also~employs a device and motto of sorts. The device may Gloriani: "Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much be read in the oft-mentioned clocks, including the clock at Berne whose matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you figures emerge at timed intervals, and in the concealed object of Wool- haven't had that, what have you had?" (AM, 149). lett manufacture. The motto can be read in "live all you can" and later Time is of the essence in The Ambassadors; James repeatedly char­ in omnes vulnerant, ultima necat, suggesting a possible Latin inscription, acterizes it as passing quickly. R. W. Stallman discussed the novel's em­ now illegible, on Dinteville's dagger, which Hervey has inferred from a phasis on time and suggested that the small object of domestic use that "design after Holbein for the sheath of such a weapon" in the museum Strether refuses to name is a cheap alarm clock or some other time at Basel. That sheath, "on a space corresponding to that which, on indicator.10 James describes Strether as having the "pen-stroke of time" Dinteville's dagger, shows his age, bears the mysterious inscription: MORQUNOT. [This] strange conglomeration might be resolved into ( on his wrinkled face. He remembers the inscription of the clock in Spain: Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat ("They had all morally wounded, MORTE QUIESCAT NOT; a hotch-potch of Latin and German which may 12 the last had morally killed") [AM, 64). Thus, time is the ally of death; be translated 'Death stills all ills.'" But it is the special emphasis James and death and dying are mentioned often in the novel. Maria Gostrey gives to the gray in Chad's hair, mentioning it four times early in the says to Strether when she leaves him, "Till death!" {AM, 52). Jeanne de novel, that establishes a direct link to Dinteville's memento mori. James Vionnet, Madame de Vionnet's daughter, reminds Strether of "a por­ translates the small skull in Dinteville's cap, a personal device, into the trait of a small old-time princess of whom nothing was known but that realistic terms of Chad's graying hair. In fact, the fourth mention she had died young" {AM, 180). And Mrs. Newsome can be seen as the specifically recalls Dinteville's cap; James describes a hat covering figure of death (she wears a black silk dress), who "wants to protect" Chad's hair (AM, 105). Chad "from life" (AM, 50). Leon Edel has pointed out how James experienced his own me­ The approach of death is as apparent in James's novel as in Hol­ mento mori just as he was preparing to write The Ambassadors; the beard bein's painting. For Madame de Vionnet, who is ten years older than he had worn since a young man was coming in "quite white." James Chad and who is a Catholic with a living husband, the passage of time wrote his brother that it made him "feel, as well as look, so old" that he 13 is tragic. (She, too, wears black when Strether first meets her at Glo- shaved it off. riani's party.) The last scenes of The Ambassadors pertain to the death of There are many other parallels between the details of Holbein's her love affair with Chad, who will be returning to his own life. It is Ambassadors and those of James's novel. For example, James must have evening, the death of the day, and she knows she "will be the loser in found Holbein's exaggeration of the size of Polisy on the terrestrial the end" (AM, 405)." As for Strether, "it amused him to say to himself globe an inspiration for his chief characters' exaggeration of Woollett, Massachusetts, as the center of the United States map. And Dinteville, 9. Hervey, Holbein's Ambassadors, 204. by resting his hand next to a sundial, which is placed near a celestial 10. R. W Stallman, "'The Sacred Rage': The Time-Theme in The Ambassa­ dors," Modern Fiction Studies, III (1957), 49. 11. See Adeline R. Tintner, "High Melancholy and Sweet: James and the 12. Hervey, Holbein's Ambassadors, 206. Arcadian Tradition," Colby Library Quarterly, XII (September, 1976), 109-21. 13. Edel, The Treacherous Years, 355. 94 HENRY JAMES AND THE LUST OF THE EYES

clock (Fig. 47), shows a sensitivity to the pressure of time similar to Chad's. The sundial gives the date April n, indicating it is springtime, as it is in James's novel. Chad further resembles Dinteville in the diplo­ matic skills he displays when arranging Jeanne de Vionnet's marriage in the correct French style. He is saved from being a cad by the h in his name (which we might read as the Holbein in him), for he leaves Marie not because he is bored with her—"I give you my word of honor ... that I'm not a bit tired of her" (AM, 423)—but because he must assume control of his family's manufacturing business. Chad behaves in the classical tradition of the young man from the provinces who has had a sophisticative love affair but who must resume his work because time is short. Dinteville had his melancholic motto and devices because, though young and already a successful diplomat, he was "often ill" and "the vision of Death hovered constantly before his eyes." H He needed to remind himself of the swift passage of time. , Like Holbein's microcosm of French Renaissance thought and taste, James's microcosm of Paris in the early 1900s creates a mood in which the cultivated pleasures of civilization are invaded by reminders of fleeting time and inescapable death, a mood that established a pattern for twentieth-century novels. , written twenty-five *" years later, is the most distinguished inheritor of this pattern, blending love in Paris with death in the bullfights. But death is approa^ieaonry emblematically in The Ambassadozs,-AS Jtis.in Holbein's painting. In the novel 1 he Wings of the Dove, which followed close on its heels, death is no longer hidden in mottoes or devices, but is actually experienced by the character Milly Theale. Death seems natural in that symbolist novel. But in The Ambassadors, considered James's most impressionistic novel, we are inclined to attribute the hidden apparatus of death to the newly revealed identityof Holbein's masterpieceTTames hasTolcIed the French ^Renaissance techniques of device anH motto into his twentieth-century novel of life and death of the heart in Paris, the center of the world, then and later, for good Americans.

14. Hervey, Holbein's Ambassadors, 204. F'g- 43 Detail of Holbein, Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve ("The Ambass, dors"). Reprinted by permission of the National Gallery, London. Fig. 44 Detail of Holbein, Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve ("The Ambassa­ dors"). Reprinted by permission of the National Gallery, London.

1 Fig. 4s Photographic Correction of Detail of Holbein, Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve ("The Ambassadors"). Reprinted by permission of the National Gallery, London. Ml

Fig. 46 Detail of Holbein,/ea/z

Fig. 47 Detail of Holbein, Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve ("The Ambassa­ dors"). Reprinted by permission of the National Gallery, London.